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Are you wasting your IT Application Support budget?

July 3, 2010/0 Comments/in Technology Budgets/by admin

Are you wasting your IT Application Support budget? The concept of Lean is based on eliminating waste from a process. Application Maintenance and Support is one of the largest IT costs for an enterprise. Waste from a large project can have significant short-term impacts. Waste in the Application Support area can far exceed project waste […]

IT Job Tips – Your Success as a IT Project Manager Lies in your Willingness to Make Decisions

July 2, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, IT, IT Professionals, IT project manager, Project Manager/by admin

Having the guts to go out and make decisions will enhance your career. Back in December of last year I wrote how “Decision Making is Essential to Good Project Management.” I found that there are many articles already written on how to go about making decisions. One of the best of have read was pointed […]

Are you wasting your IT Application Support budget?

July 3, 2010/0 Comments/in Technology Budgets/by admin

IT Job Tips – Your Success as a IT Project Manager Lies in your Willingness to Make Decisions

July 2, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, IT, IT Professionals, IT project manager, Project Manager/by admin

Are you wasting your IT Application Support budget?

The concept of Lean is based on eliminating waste from a process. Application Maintenance and Support is one of the largest IT costs for an enterprise. Waste from a large project can have significant short-term impacts. Waste in the Application Support area can far exceed project waste because of the long-term nature of support.

What is Application Maintenance and Support? If you are typical, you have Application Maintenance and Support teams consisting of a fixed number of resources deployed to provide following types of services:

1. Resolution of Incidents and Problems

2. Consultation Services – Answer questions about the operation of the system and provide planning services to customer

3. Scheduled services such as planned enhancements to add capabilities or provide custom one-time access to information

Do you have the right number of people assigned to the support team? How well do you handle spikes in support requirements? Are the support services beneficial or are they simply “busy work” to occupy a fixed team of resources? Are the supported applications providing value to the business?

Most of support activities are short in duration and require detailed knowledge of the system or time-consuming analysis and research. In order to avoid the time-consuming analysis, support teams are typically staffed with knowledgeable experts. It takes so long for a person to learn the application, organizations resist transferring staff which limits staffing flexibility, adds costs, and increases waste.

Support teams are staffed to handle spikes in problems that may occur during peak periods. A spike in enhancement requests may lead to a growing backlog because of the difficulty in orienting staff. A lull in priority work may leave the team under-utilized.

Most support teams encounter the following challenges:

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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Having the guts to go out and make decisions will enhance your career.

Back in December of last year I wrote how “Decision Making is Essential to Good Project Management.” I found that there are many articles already written on how to go about making decisions. One of the best of have read was pointed out in Preetham Nadig’s response to my blog last December. You can read that article, “The case for behavioral strategy” on the McKenzie Quarterly web site. Throughout my career I have been frustrated by slow decision making on my projects. Today I would like to elaborate more on the authority of project managers to make decisions.

Many experts on leadership point out that the worst decision is the decision not to make a decision. You can find this phrased in many different ways but the meaning is the same. What many people don’t realize is that avoiding a decision is a decision in itself. The ramifications of avoiding or delaying a decision must be analyzed against actually making a decision. In my previous blog I emphasized some of the problems that can occur if decisions are not made in a timely manner.

The lack of a decision can be quite detrimental to any project. To be successful, projects must continuously make forward progress. Since the project manager’s performance is measured by the success of their project(s) it is of utmost importance that project managers ensure that decisions are made effectively.

There are two categories of decisions that I will define here. The first is a decision that is out of the project manager’s control and the second is a decision that is within the project manager’s control. Yes, there is a lot of gray area in between and being able to decipher who has the authority to make decisions is not easy.

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Having the guts to go out and make decisions will enhance your career.